Saturday, March 30, 2013

Not darkness but twilightIn which even the bestof minds must make its waynow. And slowly the questionsoccur, vague but formidablefor all that. We pass our handsover their surface like blindmen feeling for the mechanismthat will swing them aside. Theyyield, but only to re-formas new problems; and onedoes not even do thatbut towers immovablebefore us.Is there no wayof other thought of answeringits challenge? There is an anticipationof it to the point ofdying. There have been timeswhen, after long on my kneesin a cold chancel, a stone has rolledfrom my mind, and I have lookedin and seen the old questions liefolded and in a placeby themselves, like the piledgraveclothes of love’s risen body.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

When wind and winter turn our vineyardTo a bitter Calvary,What hands come out and crucify usLike the innocent vine?

How long will starlight weep as sharp as thornsIn the night of our desolate life?How long will moonlight fear to free the naked prisoner?Or is there no deliverer?

A mob of winds, on Holy Thursday, come like murderersAnd batter the walls of our locked and terrified souls.Our doors are down, and our defense is done.Good Friday’s rains, in Roman order,March, with sharpest lances, up our vineyard hill.

More dreadful than St. Peter’s cryWhen he was being swallowed in the sea,Cries out our anguish: “O! We are abandoned!”When in our life we see the ruined vineCut open by the cruel spring,Ploughed by the furious season!

As if we had forgotten how the whips of winterAnd the cross of AprilWould all be lost in one bright miracle.For look! The vine on Calvary is bright with branches!See how the leaves laugh in the light,And how the whole hill smiles with flowers:And know how all our numbered veins must runWith life, like the sweet vine, when it is full of sun.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Today is traditionally known as Spy Wednesday; the designated gospel passage for this day is the account of Judas' betraying Jesus. The priest at this morning's Mass said that maybe the reason Judas , who was a member of the Zealots, did it was because he thought Jesus would fight back and start a battle with the Roman occupiers, and when Jesus didn't fight back, Judas was so devastated with his own betrayal that he decided to commit suicide.

The poet James Wright has another take on Judas:

Saint
Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I
caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

It doesn't feel like Spring, and snow is once again in the forecast, but still, it is Palm Sunday, and Holy Week begins.

Here's a poem from Denise Levertov. For some reason, it calls to me today:

To Live in the Mercy of God

To lie back under the tallestoldest trees. How far the stemsrise, risebefore ribs of shelteropen!To live in the mercy of God. The completesentence too adequate, has no give.Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows ofstony wood beneath lenientmoss bed.And awe suddenlypassing beyond itself. Becomesa form of comfort.Becomes the steadyair you glide on, armsstretched like the wings of flying foxes.To hear the multiple silenceof trees, the rainyforest depths of their listening.To float, upheld,as salt waterwould hold you,once you dared.To live in the mercy of God.To feel vibrate the enrapturedwaterfall flinging itselfunabating down and downto clenched fists of rock.Swiftness of plunge,hour after year after century,O or Ahuninterrupted, voicemany-stranded.To breathespray. The smoke of it.Arcsof steelwhite foam, glissadesof fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—rage or joy?Thus, not mild, not temperate,God’s love for the world. Vastflood of mercyflung on resistance.

Source: “To Live in the Mercy of God” from Sands from the Well, by DeniseLevertov. New York: New Directions, 1996.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

This morning, a chilly Saturday, I slept late - all the way until 8:30, when I had the luxury of waking up without an alarm clock. So I am not mawmsey this morning, though I like the word very much.

I was leafing through my most recent acquisition: The Word Museum by Jeffrey Kacirk.

It's a collection of what he calls "the most remarkable English words ever forgotten." I like to write poems using such words, spinning images from them, playing with them. So this book is a goldmine. He lists his sources in the back of the book, and he found mawmsey in

Georgina Jackson's Shropshire
Word-Book which was published in London in 1879-81.

Mawmsey
= Sleepy;stupid, as from want of rest or
over-drinking.

I have certainly experienced that! To be so tired that one feels drunk without having been drinking.

I'm not ready to write a poem using mawmsey this morning, but I think I might try to use that book as a springboard for my writing a poem a day during April.

A
poem’s music affects us whether or not we make it conscious; still, to study
sound’s workings reawakens bother ear and poem. Generalization cannot teach
this alertness. It is learned only by saying one poem at a time aloud,
completely. Voicing it repeatedly feeling its weights and measures sounding its
vowels; noticing where in the body each syllable comes to rest; tasting the
consonant’ motion through lips and tongue…”(9)

Jane
Hirschfieldfrom “Poetry and the Mind
of Concentration” in Nine Gates: Entering
the Mind of Poetry